Brief review of the Global Innovation Index 2019

The Global Innovation Index (GII) 2019 is an annual metrics assessing national investments and benefits in innovation. The index combines measures in several areas like institutions, human capital and research, infrastructure, market sophistication, business sophistication, knowledge and technology outputs and creative outputs. 
https://www.globalinnovationindex.org/gii-2019-report

The 2019 GII top ten countries were 

1. Switzerland 
2. Sweden 
3. The United States of America 
4. The Netherlands 
5. The United Kingdom 
6. Finland 
7. Denmark 
8. Singapore as only Asian country
9. Germany and 
10. Israel.

The UAE came to 36 improving two ranks from 2018. The UAE keeps the position of the highest innovative Arabic nation.

General Findings:

1. Public R&D funding is growing very slowly whereas business R&D is in steep rise. This means that there will be hype commercial applications of existing technology, but less new knowledge created in base research for future opportunities. The rising protectionism will slow down the global innovation networks and knowledge flows.
2. The top 10 innovative nations have remained almost the same. Switzerland being at the top, Nordic countries, Netherlands, UK, Germany and USA persisting. Singapore being the only Asian country. Israel rising to 10th position. At the low GDP category, some Southern African countries stand up like Burundi, Malawi, Mozambique and Rwanda. Somewhat the small nations with high education and knowledge infrastructure keep up with competition.
3. Some nations get more out from the innovations than the others. China stands out as a good utiliser of its innovation investments. The best beneficiaries may have more balanced support over the life-cycle of innovation: idea-design-investment-production-marketing-consumption.
4. Science and Technology (S&T) clusters accelerate innovation. Clusters create knowledge, patents and products. US (26) and China (18) are leading countries in numbers of clusters. Iran ranks 46 with Teheran cluster.

Conclusions:

• Science and Technology clusters correlate well to high innovation index. It is essential to bring different sciences together and provide platforms for design, manufacturing, finance and market. Combination of ideas and ability to build and deliver create the best foundation to innovation.
• New knowledge needs to build on previous knowledge. New knowledge needs to foster new designs and models particularly in digital economy. 
• The GII ranking is based on quantitative data rather than qualitative therefore may give a biased view to global innovation i.e. higher the GDP the better in innovation.
• Besides the generation of Wikipages, there is no reference in indicators to innovation activity that happens in open societies, digital services or products in video game industry, mobile applications etc. It may be that GII is counting only the 3rd generation of industrial and economic value creation and misses the emerging 4th generation value production and consumption.